How to compile a map with GPS? "You Are Here" maps the spaces of a building, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and then installs that map in and on the building itself: not in the name of self-reference but rather of superimposition, of the overlay of asymmetrical spaces. Build up a series of successive point and line measurements, over two days in September: ten minutes apiece for five points [five points] and again four more, two lines walked on the roof and a set of five letters. The data and drawings -- on the wall, on the monitors, on the building, and on these pages -- are the traces of an interaction with the satellite network, and the physical space is layered over and folded with the immaterial remnants of this encounter. The passage of data through the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace leaves its mark on the site of reception -- not with the destructive force of an explosion, but with the silent insistence of images, light and writing.

The composite map is a series of layers, corrected and averaged points traced over one another in the memory of a computer. The layered data are correlated by reference to a quasi-arbitrary point: the so-called 0/0 reference point enables the digitized data to be coordinated with the space of its reference. On the composite map [You are here: Museu ] , not all the points recorded by the GPS receiver -- even the averaged points -- fit into the space defined by the walls of the museum. And even with the most accurate receiver available on the market, and the most precise corrections possible, the point is always divisible into a series of points somewhere in the zone of an expected point. The GPS information refers to but does not simply represent the space it maps: it exceeds, transforms, and re-organizes that space into another space. Not a representation of a space, but a space itself ... or rather, spacing itself, passage and inscription, light and motion, transmission and interface. GPS can locate a target to within a few meters, measure the movement of a mountain after an earthquake, keep an airplane on course, direct a 911 response team to your doorstep -- and this active intervention obliges us to take these maps and readouts seriously, obliges us to think of these computerized maps as real spaces, at least as real as anything else (the building, for example). Perhaps there is more than one dominant definition of this, or any, space. The composite map, in its compilation and complication, charts a digital ground, a space of pixels -- a space in which we think and act and move, every day.

AAcquired 2 September 1995, 09:37:17 - 10:30:14 GPS time. NAVSTAR 
satellites seen: 15,28,21,01,23,22,31.

1. 41º 22' 58.93" North, 2º 09' 58.25" East.
2. 41º 22' 58.75" North, 2º 09' 58.35" East.
3. 41º 22' 58.56" North, 2º 09' 58.56" East.
4. 41º 22' 58.47" North, 2º 09' 58.60" East.
5. 41º 22' 58.30" North, 2º 09' 58.87" East.

ALIGNMENT Five points and line, stationary and mobile 
GPS receiver on the roof of above Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. 
Data: 1870 position records, after differential correction. 

Acquired: 2 September 1995, in six separate sequences, 09:10:36 - 10:30:14 GPS time. = NAVSTAR satellites seen: 15, 28, 21, 01, 23, 22, 31.

FACADE  Five points and two lines, stationary and mobile GPS 
receiver on roof of Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. 

Data: 2010 position records, after differential correction. Acquired: 2 September 1995, in seven separate sequences, 09:10:36 - 10:30:14 GPS time. NAVSTAR satellites seen: 15, 28, 21, 01, 23, 22, 31

BUILDING  Nine points and two lines, stationary and mobile GPS receiver 
on roof of Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona. 

Data: 2784 position  records, after differential correction. 
Acquired: 1 Sept 1995, in four separate sequences, 10:07:03 - 10:50:44 GPS  time, 
and 2 Sept 1995, in seven separate sequences, 09:10:36 - 10:30:14 GPS time. 
NAVSTAR satellites seen: 15,  28, 21, 01, 23, 22, 31, 14.

YOU ARE HERE: MUSEU Nine points, two lines, and  five letters,
stationary  and mobile GPS receiver on roof above Museu d'Art Contemporani de 
Barcelona. 

Data: 3079 position records, after differential correction.
Acquired: 1 Sept 1995, in nine separate sequences, 09:48:13-15:30:13 GPS time, 
and 2 Sept 1995, in seven separate sequences, 09:10:36 -10:30:14 GPS time. 
NAVSTAR satellites seen: 04, 07, 14, 18, 15, 28, 21, 01, 23, 22, 31